When my 3 year-old son was afraid of having bad dreams one night, I gave him a couple glow stick bracelets
Great idea. One word of caution: I'd only do this for older kids who would understand (and heed) directions not to put the bracelet in their mouths.
If you really want to get serious about it, label the serving spoons as well.
Related: More Thanksgiving tips!
We have a couple of those flushable wet wipe containers from when my kids were toilet training. We fill them up with tissues and put them in the car. They're smaller, so they take up less room and much sturdier than a tissue box. If you happen to buy just the right kind of Kleenex and place them in there just so, you can actually use the pop top on the container, as the tissues will come right out, one after another like a normal box of tissues.
To cook the turkey faster, chop it up. Separate the wings, thighs, legs, breasts, etc. because a breast or thigh cooks much faster than a whole freaking turkey. This way, instead of getting up at 4am to start the turkey you can pop it in the oven an hour or two before you are gonna sit down to eat, depending on how big your bird is.
Related: More Thanksgiving tips!
Our 11 month-old son is almost completely off of jarred baby food and onto solids, but has always been picky about foods that are sticky or sort of slimy like cut up grapes and bananas (it doesn't sound so appealing written out... "slimy!" Yum!). Recently my wife came up with a great idea: coat them with Cheerio dust. Now he doesn't have any problem picking them up and doesn't get frustrated that he's got sticky hands.
Ah, those texture issues. Don't you love them? It tells us a lot about how attuned kids' senses are...sounds, images, smells, textures...all so intense for them.
Saline nasal spray is sold at CVS in two-packs. It's l expensive than buying one at a time and much cheaper than the cute kid spray with cartoons on it. So, I bought four, came home and right away Sharpied each one with a family member's name. We've already suffered through one round of colds this season and, in the middle of the night, I know I am reaching for a soothing, chemical free, and, if not germ free, at least germ-personalized product.
Basically, I am learning that if it involves the words "Sharpie" and "Right Away" it is bound to make my life easier.
So true, Jenny. So true.
For more details OR to purchase, read the Amazon Wii Fit offer page
I was lucky enough to receive a Google Wave invite and am using it to collaborate the meal planning with the husband, the mother and the mother-in-law. We can all make edits to the original list as we change our minds or buy the necessary ingredients! So far, this is the most well-planned Thanksgiving we have ever had.
From: Some subset of the Parenthacker crowd:
WHAT'S GOOGLE WAVE?
From: Asha
Google Wave is a nifty new collaboration tool that blurs the line between conversations and documents. (But that's just the beginning: here's the rub straight from Google). It's in limited beta right now, but you can request an invitation to be a tester.
Potentially relevant aside, also from Asha:
You could do something similar with Google Documents. (You'll need a free Google account to be able to use any of these apps.) Create new documents with menu plans, shopping lists, and whatever else the group needs to know. Then share the documents with your family. People can make changes at will. If you want to see how the documents have changed over time (such as when you added Brussels sprouts to the shopping list and they later mysteriously disappeared), in Google Docs, choose File >> See revision history. It'll all be there in black and white.
When my children were little, I used a permanent marker to color code the back-neck labels in their clothes. If a garment was cold wash, I placed a blue mark on the label. If it was warm wash, I placed a red mark. The kids could sort the laundry into cold and warm piles in a hurry even if they couldn't read. They got lots of practice with getting the laundry washed while they were still at home, and I really appreciated their help.
Related: How to streamline laundry when your baby starts eating solid foods? Talk amongst yourselves.
We stayed in a hotel while visiting family, and were back in our hotel room. Our twin boys were clamoring for their pre-bedtime cups of milk, and while we'd managed to find a convenience store open to buy some milk, there was no dish soap to be found, and we'd forgotten to wash the kids' cups before we left my aunt's house. Normally we'd just rinse and let it be, but they smelled a little off, so we really wanted to wash the cups first if we could.
We contemplated the contents of our toiletries kit and didn't like any of our options. Shampoo? No. Body wash? We'd rather not. What else did we have? "I'll figure something out," my husband promised and disappeared into the bathroom of our hotel room.
A few minutes later he re-emerged, and held out a sippy cup for me to smell. "What do you think?" I gingerly took a whiff. Minty! "Mouthwash. They gave us a little thing of it along with the shampoo and soap and stuff. I figure mouthwash kills germs, right?" "Sure does. Wow. Nicely done!"
(The next day, we bought a small bottle of dish soap which will go in our toiletries kit from now on, for future travel. But I kinda like the elegance of my husband's solution, and will keep it in mind, just in case.)
Related: "Scrub" toothbrushes and toys with denture cleanser tablets
Do tell! Send me an email with THANKSGIVING in the subject line (to hacks@parenthacks.com) about how you're saving time, energy and brain cells this Thanksgiving. I'll post as many tips as I can before the big day.
And to show my thanks, on Thanksgiving I will randomly choose one tipster to win this super cute, musical Lulla-Bear (a teddy bear-shaped MP3 player)! It comes with preloaded music, and you can load your own songs. Very clever.
Many grocery stores now offer online shopping. You don't have to complete the transaction though. When I go shopping for my weekly groceries or for a big event like Thanksgiving, I always do my shopping list online. I click on each item I need and it adds to the virtual shopping cart. Then, when I am done, I print out the list. It miraculously sorts my items for me by aisle. I go shopping on auto pilot with a baby in the sling on my belly and at least one toddler in the cart. I don't have to think about what we need for even an instant. Just follow the what the list says for each aisle and we're good to go.
If the task of shopping seems too daunting for whatever reason, I can go ahead and order them online and have a shopper gather them up for just $5.95. Pull up in front, hand over payment, and they load the car for me. Even if your local grocery store doesn't have online shopping like that, Lowes Foods to Go is online and will at least sort out your list for you in a logical way even if the aisle numbers are wrong. It'd be a big help no matter what.
I never would have figured that out myself. Our local healthy food grocery has an amazing online shopping service -- I'm going to try this out. Thanks, Chris!
Note: I've closed comments on this post so we can keep the responses to this comment in its original thread. To comment, click over to An Organized Thanksgiving and leave your comments there. I'll also open the conversation a bit wider with an upcoming "Talk Amongst Yourselves" post devoted to Thanksgiving. Stay tuned!
Related: Meal planning hack: Cook from a single cookbook all week (or all month)
